This invention concerns a device to grip and manipulate bobbins of textile thread.
The invention is applied in the textile field to grip, lift and transport the bobbins of textile thread after the thread has been wound thereon.
The bobbins to which the invention refers are of the type which include a core or support, commonly known as cops, onto which the textile thread is wound in coils; the cops are substantially cylindrical in shape with flanges at the two ends; normally they are small and, when the thread is wound on, they weigh around a few kilograms.
The state of the art includes cores or supports onto which the textile thread is wound in coils, whether the thread be natural, synthetic or mixed.
There are supports which are commonly known as cops made of plastic or metallic material according to the type of thread to be wound; they have a cylindrical body with flanges at the ends to contain the wound textile thread.
Despite the fact that the textile industry is becoming increasingly automated, it is also known that, in some cases and/or for certain processes, in some textile machines the cops of thread are still lifted, transported and loaded/unloaded manually.
These manual operations to lift and/or transport and/or load/unload the cops are extremely difficult inasmuch as the cops have no means for the operator to grip.
This problem becomes even more serious if we consider that, for example when synthetic threads are being wound, the cops are extremely heavy and slippery, which may cause the workers considerable operational problems.
In those cases when the cops are moved by automated devices, it is extremely complex and risky for the safety of the wound thread to connect a gripper device to the cop. Moreover, in some cases moving the cops manually may damage the surface layers of the wound thread both from the mechanical point of view, as the coils may possibly overlap or become tangled, and also from the point of view of quality, as the thread is easily dirtied when it is manipulated manually.